Indian Cricket: Age-Old Matters and Some Glorious New Beginnings

“When you start hitting respectable bowlers over their head for sixes, you are serving notice!”

So went a popular statement by one of the greatest batsmen of the modern era, Sir Vivian Richards. The subject of the statement was a young 17 year old on his maiden tour of England.

Fast forward 17 years.In the period of Sachin’s first and his latest test century against Australia, legends have come and legends have gone. Brian Lara, Inzamam-ul-Haq, Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath, Alan Donald, are a few who come to mind. In any other era, all of the players would have been considered the greatest cricketers of their era.

Unfortunately, more so for the bowlers, they all played second fiddle to one man. Make no mistake, this isn’t one of those articles crying in the glory of the great man. Of how complete he is, how perfect he is, how unassailable he is, et al. Instead this is just a minor reflection on how we, and moreso the press, are looking at Tendulkar.

In any other country, and with any other player, no one would have called a batsman scoring close to 500 runs at probably the most difficult place to score runs beyond his best. But this is India, and this is Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar.

4 years ago he wasn’t scoring quickly enough; he should retire. 3 years ago he was getting injured too often, cricket had started to take its toll on his body; he should retire. 2 years ago, he wasn’t consistent enough; he should retire. But what happened last year my journalistic comrades? I think we should stop kidding ourselves.

To me it’s a farcical attempt by our “experts” to cover up whatever they have been saying for the last few years, always taking the focus away from a great innings. "It was a great innings, but the pull shot showed that age had caught up with him". What the heck? Was this really the first time Tendulkar miss hit a pull stroke?

8 years ago after batting for about a similar amount of time he holed out to McGrath in a similar fashion after scripting a famous ton. But no one said anything then. Perhaps because he was 26 and not 34?

David Gower rightly remarked after India’s test tour to England last year that most of the noise surrounding Sachin’s getting hit on the helmet was just because he was on the, so called, “wrong side of 30”. “Ponting, who is for my money the best batsman in the world today, gets hit on the helmet often enough”, he had pointed out then. (Ponting, mind you, is actually just a year younger that the Master!)

Indian commentators were found harping about how 30-plus domestic cricketers back home should be given more chances, “just like in Australia”. Funny how we forgot to about the existing 30 year olds in the national squad. What wrong did Ganguly commit? And what heights is his “replacement” Raina scaling? He isn’t even playing!

Instead India is sticking to Sehwag at the top, even after repeated failures… for over 5 years now! With Ganguly and Tendulkar, India had the best opening pair in the world, and importantly, they were delivering consistently. India’s highest partnership this series has been 68. This after 5 games. Even if the washed off games were accounted for, this really is a lousy rate, to be moderate.

What the Men Who Matter (read selectors and team management) do from here, is a big mystery. If they bring back Ganguly right after a big series like this, at the expense of a youngster, it would not only be embarrassing for them, but it would also be going back one step from the youth program that they have started, for the better or for the worse. And that would spell plain doom.

One, it would certainly make the younger players less confident leading to a further dip in performance, and two, it would be like accepting that they screwed a highly important series, which would further draw flak from the public, the media, and their ever displeased bosses, the BCCI. This will really be a tricky one!

At the same time though, a word of praise for the youngsters. Gautam Gambhir is continuing a dream run in cricket. If his performance for Delhi in December was anything to go by, this kid has finally arrived.

What’s been most pleasing is the way he’s treated the best spinner in the world, Muralitharan. I have feared for long that in India, we are fast losing the art that made us so strong against Australia in the past decade, playing spin bowling.

Luckily, guys like Rohit Sharma and Gambhir are looking to continue in the vein of the likes of Laxman, Tendulkar and Ganguly, three of the most flamboyant players of spin for Indiain this era. It is really heartening to see the reigns of the Indian batting, along with the bowling, in great hands!

In Gambhir, Yuvraj, Rohit Sharma, Dhoni, Ishant, R.P.Singh, Sreesanth and Piyush Chawla we have the nucleus of a world beating side!

What they can achieve is entirely upto how high they choose to aim.